It was a long time coming, but tonight it was made official: the 2016-17 Devils will not be playing for Lord Stanley’s Cup. They were officially eliminated from playoff contention with a 3-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes at Prudential Center tonight.
It is a big weekend at Prudential Center as the NHL Centennial Fan Arena is setting up shop in Championship Plaza for the weekend. They were there tonight and will be at tomorrow’s game against the Dallas Stars too. The Centennial Fan Arena is an interactive roadshow that includes a museum with artifacts from the NHL’s 100 years, a virtual reality Zamboni game, street hockey on a specially constructed rink and photo opportunities for fans with the Stanley Cup. I will be attending the Dallas game tomorrow and will be able to give a bit of a review of the whole thing.
Tonight was also a big matchup from the perspective of the Hurricanes. The Canes were only five points behind the Bruins and Islanders for the final Eastern Conference wild card spot. A win for New Jersey would be the first time the Devils had swept a season series from the Carolina franchise since way back in 1991-92 when the Canes were still the Hartford Whalers. This was the fourth and final meeting between the teams this season.
In other Devils-related news, today Andy Greene was named New Jersey’s nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy by the New Jersey chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. Devils beat writer Andrew Gross (who is the president of the New Jersey PHWA) said that the main reasons he nominated Greene was due to the iron man streak (which was broken this year, but was significant enough), overcoming the death of his father during the season and, he said, because although it has been a trying season for the Devils, he has never seen Greene’s demeanor change. He is always a class act and that went a long way in naming him the Devils’ candidate for the Masterton Trophy.
Roster-wise, Michael Cammalleri and Jacob Josefson did practice with the team this morning, but are still day-to-day. Devante Smith-Pelly is out long term and Stefan Noesen was a healthy scratch tonight. The Devils would be dressing 11 forwards and seven defensemen. Carolina was without Jay McClement, Matt Tennyson and Valentin Zykov. Missing Cammalleri was a big blow to the Devils, as he had four goals in the previous three games against the Hurricanes, including a hat trick.
In goal, Carolina started Eddie Lack, who made 26 saves on 27 Devils shots for a .963 save percentage. The Devils went back to Cory Schneider, who made 25 saves on 28 Hurricane shots for a .893 save percentage. Lack did not have good numbers historically versus the Devils, but came up big tonight when he had to, especially when the Devils began to really pour things on offensively late in the game, as we shall see.
The Devils are a young team, having dressed ten rookies this year. That is tied with Arizona for the most in the NHL. How would those young guys react tonight, knowing that the Devils would likely be officially out of the playoff hunt by night’s end?
The Hurricanes started the scoring when Sebastian Aho scored his 22nd from Elias Lindholm and Klas Dahlbeck. The goal came at the 2:47 mark of the second period to make it 1-0 Carolina.
Following that goal, the Devils would get into some penalty trouble. First, at the 5:57 mark, Blake Coleman went barreling into goaltender Lack and gave him a snow shower resulting in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. While the Devils were killing that, John Moore was whistled for tripping Jeff Skinner at 7:18 which would give Carolina 39 seconds of a 5-on-3 advantage. The Devils would kill this off – both teams would post an ofer on the power play, going 0-for-2 and it would give them some momentum. From there to virtually the end of the second period, the Devils just assaulted the Hurricanes’ net and Lack. But he fought them off until the 17:02 mark when the puck ricocheted off of the linesman’s skate on an errant Carolina pass and went right to Taylor Hall, who immediately broke in on a 2-on-1 with Travis Zajac. Hall dished to Zajac, who beat Lack through the five hole to tie the game at one.
From there, New Jersey continued their barrage with chance after chance that they just could not finish. With seconds left in the second period, Damon Severson had seemingly broken through when his shot looked like it went in, however Lack had actually gotten a piece of the puck and deflected it up into the protective crowd netting.
The Devils had chances in the third period too. Early in the third, Cory made a save and the Devils cleared the zone, right to Blake Pietila who used his speed to beat Canes’ defenseman Noah Hanifin for a breakaway, but Lack stopped him too.
The game winner would come for Carolina when Skinner poked the puck away from Greene leading to a breakaway and a goal at 9:34 of the third. It came unassisted and was Skinner’s 30th of the season.
Pietila would have another chance, this time to tie things, but was again stopped by Lack late in the third. Eventually, though, Aho scored an insurance goal from a tough angle on Schneider from Derek Ryan to give the Canes a 3-1 lead.
Cory would be pulled with about 2:14 left in the game, come back in for a center ice faceoff with 36 seconds left and be pulled again. But the Devils could not score the two they needed to extend the game and their season and the game slipped away from them.
So, from here the Devils face the Dallas Stars tomorrow afternoon at 5 PM. As I said, I will be attending this game, so my post will be a little bit late. From here on out, this is a test of the young players’ mettle. It is an audition for next season and who will be a part of the team going forward. In its own way, that is a lot of fun to watch, but it will still be disappointing when the playoffs begin and, for a fifth straight year, the Devils are not a part of it.